1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid ejecting apparatus and a liquid ejecting method. More specifically, the present invention relates to a heating mechanism and heating method for a liquid ejecting apparatus.
2. Related Art
Typically, ink jet printers include a heating mechanism which is disposed near a printing head which are used to dry the print surface of a print medium, such as a sheet of paper. These heating mechanism are particularly useful in printers which use a large-scale printing head called a line head, which executes printing at a high speed, in order to quickly dry the print surface of the print medium.
One difficulty with the configurations currently used in the art, however, is that when the heating mechanism is used to dry the print surface, the temperature of the printing head may increase, causing the viscosity of the ink to vary. The variation in viscosity makes it necessary to correct the head driving waveform of the printing head. Moreover, a temperature detecting unit has to be mounted to detect whether an increase or variation in the temperature of the printing head has occurred. Japanese Patent Application No. JP-A-6-182997 discloses a technique in which a head thermistor is used as a temperature detecting unit which is used to correct the head driving waveform of the printing head based on the temperature detected by the head thermistor.
One problem with the mechanism described in JP-A-6-182997, however, is that the ink is a liquid and any increase in the temperature is slight due to a specific heat capacity. For this reason, when the heating mechanism operates, the detection temperature of the head thermistor is easily higher than an actual temperature of the ink. As a consequence, a large gap may occur between the actual temperature of the ink and the detection temperature of the thermistor. When there is a large gap between the actual temperature of the ink and the detection temperature of the thermistor, it is difficult to appropriately correct the head driving waveform of the printing head.
In particular, when the heating mechanism is interrupted, the actual temperature of the ink may decrease, causing an even greater gap between the actual temperature of the ink and the detection temperature of the thermistor. As a consequence, it is more difficult to appropriately correct the head driving waveform of the printing head.